ECB chief Mario Draghi declared that for the banks of the European Union, the Basel III reforms were complete. Key milestones Capital requirements Leverage ratio Liquidity requirements Analysis of Basel III impact In the United States higher capital requirements resulted in contractions in trading operations and the number of personnel employed on trading floors. Macroeconomic impact An OECD study, released on 17 February 2011, estimated that the medium-term impact of Basel III implementation on GDP growth would be in the range of −0.05% to −0.15% per year. Economic output would be mainly affected by an increase in bank lending spreads, as banks pass a rise in bank funding costs, due to higher capital requirements, to their customers. To meet the capital requirements originally effective in 2015 banks were estimated to increase their lending spreads on average by about 15 basis points. Capital requirements effective as of 2019 (7% for the common equity ratio, 8.5% for the Tier 1 capital ratio) could increase bank lending spreads by about 50 basis points. The estimated effects on GDP growth assume no active response from monetary policy. To the extent that monetary policy would no longer be constrained by the zero lower bound, the Basel III impact on economic output could be offset by a reduction (or delayed increase) in monetary policy rates by about 30 to 80 basis points. Basel III was also criticized as negatively affecting the stability of the financial system by increasing incentives of banks to game the regulatory framework. Criticism Think tanks such as the World Pensions Council have argued that Basel III merely builds on and further expands the existing Basel II regulatory base without fundamentally questioning its core tenets, notably the ever-growing reliance on standardized assessments of "credit risk" marketed by two private sector agencies- Moody's and S&P, thus using public policy to strengthen anti-competitive duopolistic practices. The conflicted and unreliable credit ratings of these agencies is generally seen as a major contributor to the US housing bubble. Academics have criticized Basel III for continuing to allow large banks to calculate credit risk using internal models and for setting overall minimum capital requirements too low. Opaque treatment of all derivatives contracts is also criticized. While institutions have many legitimate ("hedging", "insurance") risk reduction reasons to deal in derivatives, the Basel III accords: treat insurance buyers and sellers equally even though sellers take on more concentrated risks (literally